NEW DELHI—Nokia Corp. unveiled a $99 touch-screen smartphone for India and other emerging markets, seeking to regain ground in the sector.
The Finnish company on Thursday introduced the Nokia Asha 501 phone and the Asha platform that will run on the model. Nokia said the operating system is designed to broaden access for application developers.
Once the world's largest phone maker, Nokia has struggled to compete in a high-end smartphone market dominated by Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.
Low-end competition from Chinese and Indian makers has added to Nokia's woes. India's Micromax Informatics Ltd. sells a smartphone for as little as $65. And Samsung has devices that sell for less than $110, making it an increasing threat in India for Nokia, which until last year had a dominant market share in the country.
Nokia is making a play for the affordable phone industry in India and other emerging markets. George Stahl reports.
With its leap into low-cost smartphones, Nokia is continuing its push in fast-growing emerging markets, despite fierce competition and razor-thin margins. The Asha platform represents a new move by the company into smartphone operating systems, a market dominated by Apple's iOS and Google Inc.'s Android system.
Despite its scale and relationship with carriers, Nokia hasn't been able to attract developers to create desirable applications. The company dropped its Symbian platform in 2011 in favor of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows.
"With the new Asha platform, developers will be incentivized to deliver those quality apps, previously found only on high-end smartphones, thanks to unprecedented volumes, and reach opportunities through one distribution channel and a single platform," Marco Argenti, Nokia's head of developer experiences, said in a prepared statement.
Chief Executive Stephen Elop said some analysts forecast that the market for sub-$100 smartphones could be valued at $40 billion in two years. "The Asha 501 and Asha platform, we believe, will reinvent the affordable smartphone category," he said.
The Asha 501, initially built to support data services on basic second-generation phone networks, will be "relevant to 80% of the world, particularly in the emerging markets," he said.
Nokia plans to begin selling the model in June. The $99 price excludes taxes and subsidies. The dual-SIM, 98-gram smartphone has a three-inch screen, a 3.2-megapixel camera and a memory capacity of four gigabytes, which can be expanded to 32 gigabytes. Nokia—with an eye on emerging markets where electricity is scarce and Internet usage is high among young people—says the battery is good for 17 hours of talk time.
Analysts said the phone could help Nokia regain its edge against Samsung at the low end and get a piece of India's fast-growing market of consumers trading up from basic phones.
There were 170 million phones shipped to India last year, with Nokia's 26% of the market just ahead of Samsung's 22%, according to research firm Canalys. Nokia ranked second in the mobile-phone market world-wide in the fourth quarter, at 18%, down from 23.4% a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner. Samsung was first, with 22.7%.
No comments:
Post a Comment